Rock’N’Lock

Rock'N'Lock: Slot Overview

Better bust out an extra dollop of hair grease or curled bangs for this one, folks; developer Red Tiger is shaking, rattling, and rolling in an online slot called Rock'N'Lock - a stylistic representation of an earlier time when things were supposedly simpler, cleaner, and safer than they are today. Or is that just an example of Golden Age Fallacy thinking? Anyway, for a blast of guitar-riffed action and a Lock the Records respins bonus round, let's take Rock'N'Lock for a spin.

Rock'N'Lock's load screen sets the mood displaying a James Dean-type sliding shades along his nose before launching into the game. It appears to be located in Los Angeles, circa the 1950s-1960s, or is it a modern part of town that's turned uber-hipster after extensive gentrification? Whatever the case, the sun dips over a palm tree-lined street, muscle cars hit the tarmac, and it's easy to imagine coins piling into jukeboxes while burgers sizzle on grills in diners throughout the city. A jangly rockabilly track makes up the aural part of the bargain, and the scene is set for some rocking and, hopefully, locking.

Available on any device, Rock'N'Lock accepts bets of 10 p/c to $/€40 per paid spin and is played on a 5-reel, 4-row game area. The grid has 25 paylines to land winning combinations of 3 to 5 of a kind on - regular symbols pay from left to right on adjacent reels. Medium volatile, players can expect a theoretical return value of 95.69% while getting their rock and or lock on.

There's a neon/muso thing happening when we get to the paytable, which has nine normal pays and a couple of special symbols. Brightly lit 10-A card rank symbols start us off, paying 0.8 to 2 times the stake for five of a kind, building to 5 to 12 times the bet for five premium guitars, headphones/microphones, stereos, and car symbols. Jumping in to substitute for all paying symbols is the wild symbol. When one or more wilds participate in a winning line, the payout value is tripled.

Rock'N'Lock: Slot Features

Landing anywhere on the reels are Gold, and Platinum Record scatter symbols. These symbols do not contribute to win lines, but display multiples of the bet instead. Gold Records have values of 1 to 5 times the stake, whereas Platinum Records come with values of 7x, 10x, 12x, 15x, 20x, or 25x the bet. In the base game, Gold, and Platinum Records may also have a number on their top left corner of 1-5. This number represents how many paid spins the symbol will lock to the reels before falling off to help trigger the feature.

Lock The Records

When at least 3 record symbols land, the Lock the Records feature starts. Hitting 3, 4, or 5 records awards 3, 4, or 5 free respins, respectively. The triggering record symbols are locked into position for the duration of the feature. When new record symbols land, they lock as well and reset respins back to their original amount. In addition, when new record symbols hit, they add their values to the record symbols which were already on the grid. If more than one new record symbol lands on a spin, they do not improve each other's values. When the feature ends, the values of all record symbols on the screen are awarded. If the grid is full, the awarded amount is doubled.

Rock'N'Lock: Slot Verdict

The first impression of Rock'N'Lock was of the sort of online slot Sandy Olsson or Danny Zuko might play in an attempt to boost their street cred. There's a level of attitude going on, while also bringing to mind Monica Geller's gig at the Moondance Diner, where she wore a blonde wig and zipped around on roller skates, singing to patrons when certain songs played on the jukebox, making Laverne and Curly fries.

Like a 50s-themed diner, Rock'N'Lock won't be for all tastes, and there isn't much to comment on concerning the gameplay. The base game spun on, rotating round and round like a record on a turntable, accompanied by a toe-tapping distorted guitar backing track. Occasionally, at least three record scatters hit, pushing play into the Lock The Records bonus round. Again, there's not much to say about the bonus round either. It's a straightforward hold 'n win game with the goal of landing new scatters to reset the spin count and keep the round going. The only innovation is new scatters add their values to those already on the reels. To be fair, that was actually quite a neat touch, and it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if it got adopted elsewhere. Other than that, though, there are no special symbols, no special extras apart from doubling the payout if the screen is filled. As such, Lock The Records is far from being the most exciting hold 'n win bonus out there; even potential is relatively hey-ho at 2,340x the bet.

For a game alluding to muscle cars, rock 'n' roll and rebelling without a cause, Rock'N'Lock felt lacking in the vigour department. The sights and sounds have a pleasant level of rockin' to them, but after settling in, the action fell short of the rockabilly 'tude, the chromed outer shell losing much of its sheen as the game went through its paces.